Posted by Jessica
on
5 December 2009
Dolce & Gabbana Rose The One, a flanker to the company’s 2006 release The One, definitely can’t be faulted for its promotion and packaging. It has a print advertising campaign and an accompanying television commercial created by the photographer-director Jean-Baptiste Mondino; the commercial also features a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. The fragrance’s muse, Scarlett Johansson, is shown looking delicately radiant in these ads, every inch a human meringue: her platinum hair tinted a soft strawberry blonde, her creamy skin set off by a rose-colored mesh gown (Dolce & Gabbana, of course), her lush figure reclining on a bed with a pink tufted-satin headboard. Rose The One’s bottle and the fragrance’s “juice” itself are also shaded pink, in case you missed the point. With visuals this tactile and boudoir-oriented, you might expect a powdery gourmand rose fragrance along the lines of Parfumerie Generale’s Brûlure de Rose.
Unfortunately, reality intrudes with the experience of the actual Eau de Parfum inside that blush-colored bottle and its layers of well-crafted marketing…
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Posted by Jessica
on
18 September 2009
P.S. I Love You is the latest fragrance release from Bath & Body Works, and it takes its place in the “Romantics” family of the company’s Signature Collection. It was developed by perfumer Dave Apel, who designed the fragrance as a “modern experience” of the rose. In this respect, Bath & Body Works is joining the trend that Stella started in 2003 (has it been that long?!). The company still seems to be hedging its bets, perhaps fearing that a rose perfume might be judged too old-fashioned by its target audience: roses don’t appear in the fragrance’s name or label, and in the website photos, the bottles are accompanied by flowers that could just as easily be peonies as roses. There’s a similar fear of commitment, so to speak, in the promotional text. Early press releases described P.S. I Love You as a scent of “timeless love” and “heartfelt love,” but the company website now calls it “Our flirtiest fragrance ever!”
Everyone has his or her own ideas about love, but I’d personally place this fragrance beyond the initial, giggly glow of a first date and into the more comfortable, intimate zone of an established romance…
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Posted by Angela
on
24 August 2009
The other night, I was talking with friends, and for the first time this year I heard crickets in the garden outside. I said, “Wait, are those—?”, and a friend cut in, “Don’t say it!” She knew I was going to say the crickets’ chirping was a sign that autumn was coming. None of us wanted to admit it. Seemingly overnight the slant of the light has changed. Mornings are cool, although afternoons can still drive you to seek shade. The air smells different. It’s a bittersweet time of year because it is so beautiful but so short and signals that months of cold rain are around the corner. Those heartbreaking few days bridging the warm luxury of summer and the woodsmoke-tinged air of fall are to me what Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chyprée feels like.
Andy Tauer, the founder and nose behind Zurich-based Tauer Perfumes, describes Une Rose Chyprée as “an oriental rose on a chypre base”. He lists its notes as rose damascena, bay, cinnamon, bergamot, lemon, clementine, green Bourbon geranium, labdanum, oak moss, patchouli, vetiver, and vanilla. In the initial announcement about Une Rose Chyprée earlier this year, Tauer said that each 15 ml bottle of the Eau de Parfum contains one pound of steam-distilled rose petals as well as rosa damascena absolute.
The rose in Une Rose Chyprée isn’t the full, fruity, blown rose of summer, but a darker, spicier rose joined by juicy citrus and definite cinnamon…
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Posted by Robin
on
30 June 2009
Czech & Speake is a British bathroom fixtures brand. They started their fragrance line in 1980 as part of an overall strategy to “do everything that has to do with luxurious baths” (they also carry shaving products and leather toiletry bags).1 Dark Rose is one of their newer scents — it launched in 2003, and I can’t say for sure when it was taken off the market (reportedly due to production problems of some sort or another), but when I first tried it in late 2006, it was already impossible to find. Is it a kindness or a torture that perfumistas routinely share samples of discontinued fragrances?
Dark Rose was re-launched this year, and I was looking forward to trying the new vs. the old. Most unfortunately (or not: sometimes it’s best not to know) my original sample has turned, so I can only tell you about the new. It has rich top notes, with lots of saffron and that medicinal smell that often accompanies oudh wood (the notes: saffron, Bulgarian rose, patchouli, sandalwood, oudh, amber and white musk). It does, undoubtedly, smell vaguely like bandaids for a time…
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The rose has probably received more tributes in writing and song than any other flower; without even trying, anyone can easily think of a famous rose quotation or two. I recently realized that my own formative literary encounter with rose imagery was the classic children’s book The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The Rose is an important secondary character in the story: she is vain and coquettish but secretly vulnerable, and her relationship with the Prince symbolizes some of the complexities of love. (As a child, I was also very impressed by the depiction of the rose in the film version of The Little Prince.)
Although rose is my favorite note in perfumery, I try not to discuss rose-scented products too often, just because I don’t want to be monotonous. However, June is the month of roses, so I’m going to indulge myself by mentioning a few recent favorites here. And, because we should still stop and smell the proverbial roses even (or especially) during a difficult economy, all of these products are available for $10 or less…
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